Fern Schumer Chapman's Blog, page 21
February 6, 2020
Video conferencing with a Basel book club
Yesterday, my mother and I video conferenced with a book club in Basel. Amazed by the technology, Mom turned to me in the middle of our conversation and asked: “Are we really talking to a book club in Basel, Switzerland?!?” When she came to this country, she couldn’t call her parents — who had the first phone in her village, Stockstadt — because the lines were unreliable and expensive.
Some book club members had memories of the war. One woman remembered German Jewish children crossing the border into Switzerland, knocking on the door, and asking for food.
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January 28, 2020
January 18, 2020
The Rock Star of Middle Schools!
Students delight in meeting Edith, Westerfeld, FSC’s mother and the subject of her books. Edith, who is 94 years old now, is living history. She tells students of her childhood experiences during the Holocaust.The post The Rock Star of Middle Schools! appeared first on Fern Schumer Chapman.
January 12, 2020
December 1, 2019
October 7, 2019
Exhibit features 1941 letter from Gerda Katz’s family in Dominican Republic
My mother's best friend from the ship, Gerda Katz, had saved over 170 letters from her family, who had escaped Nazi Germany to the Dominican Republic in the 1930s. (I included a few of these letters in my book, THREE STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY.) Gerda, who also fled Germany as a 12-year-old unaccompanied minor, was sent to Seattle. She was separated from her family for over 21 years. One of the letters from Gerda's mother is included in this amazing exhibit.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburb...
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August 7, 2019
July 14, 2019
THREE STARS makes 7th grade required reading list
Honored that my book, THREE STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY, is included on this 7th grade required reading list for 2019-2020 at Maui Waena Intermediate School in Kahului, Hawaii!
A 2018 Junior Library Guild selection – At the age of 12, Gerda Katz fled Nazi Germany and came to America all by herself as an “unaccompanied minor.” Gerda’s story of family separation reflects the dislocating trauma, culture shock, and excruciating loneliness many unaccompanied minors experience. As Gerda becomes an American, she never stops longing to be reunited with her family. Three Stars in the Night Sky illuminates the personal damage of racism and the emotional devastation of a child coming to a new country alone.
https://www.mauiwaena.com/apps/news/s...…
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June 29, 2019
The Unwanted: My Mother
(Five stars)
The Unwanted is my family story, too.
I have come to know the people in my mother’s small town in Germany — Stockstadt am Rhein — where our family lived for over 200 years. My mother and her sister escaped Germany, but the Nazis murdered my grandparents. Families of both victims and perpetrators continue to wrestle with the legacy of the Holocaust. I’ve written about this subject in several books, as my mother and I have returned to Stockstadt many times to help the town face its history.
In rich detail, Dobbs recreates the devastating experiences of “country Jews” who tried desperately to leave Nazi Germany but had no place to go. At the same time, Dobbs fills in some of the holes in history, explaining the politics and public opinion that prevented the United States from opening its doors to more Jewish refugees. The story resonates today as our government is engaging in restrictive immigration policies and, once again, families are being ripped apart. That trauma affects generations. An important book!
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June 25, 2019
The Storks!
When my mother was a little girl living in Stockstadt, Germany in the 1930s, storks made their large nest in the bell tower of the old Rathaus. My mother remembers that she could recognize each bird and she would name them. When the weather turned cold, the birds would migrate to Africa to have their own babies. Every spring, she would wait for her “friends” to return. On the first trip my mother and I took to Stockstadt in 1991 — 52 years after she fled her home town in 1938 — the first thing she wanted to see was the storks. Sadly, we learned that the Germans had removed the nest when the old Rathaus was torn down in the late 1950s. The Germans didn’t want the noisy, dirty birds roosting in town. For several years, the storks returned, circling the new building and looking to rebuild their nest. But after several fruitless and frustrating visits, the birds gave up. In Motherland, my mother, who deeply identified with the birds, said, “They got rid of the birds the way they got rid of me.”
Today, a German friend sent me this photograph.”Yesterday, I was in Stockstadt,” he wrote, “and the storks have returned
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